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MILFORD, Mass. -- Milford softball accomplished more than just handing King Philip its first loss since the 2010 season with a 2-0 Patriot’s Day matinee win over the Warriors.

The Scarlet Hawks proved KP’s road to a potential third state Division 1 title might just run through them.

Milford pitcher and University of Kentucky commit Shannon Smith dazzled again, striking out 17, including a streak of nine straight in the fourth through sixth innings. More than that, the Scarlet Hawks scratched out five hits against Meghan Rico – a prodigious amount against the reigning ESPN Boston Miss Softball.

“I preached to them in practice that you have to put the ball in play against Rico, you have to make them make plays,” Milford head coach Brian Macchi said.

The Scarlet Hawks (5-0) struck for both of their runs in the second inning, catalyzed by Caroline Fairbanks’ lead-off single.

After a sacrifice bunt by Sam Bonvino, freshman catcher Taylor LeBrun put Milford on the board with an RBI single to right. After LeBrun advanced to second on a wild pitch, she came around to score on Elizabeth Stallone’s double.

The Warriors (4-1) managed just two hits off of Smith, but both came as lead-off hits in the fourth and seventh. Rico’s hit off her counterpart in the fourth would be the last ball KP put into play until the seventh, when Hailey Mullen singled to center to start the final frame.

However, a caught-stealing and two final strikeouts from Smith finished out her fourth shutout of the season.

“She’s just gotten stronger and stronger as the season’s gone on,” Macchi said.

The Warriors’ last loss in 2010 also came against Milford and the experience of bouncing back from one hasn’t occurred to many of KP’s players.

So the true test for Warriors then will be in what happens next.

“What we need to learn is how to respond in a situation like this,” KP head coach Jim Leonard said.

TAYLOR SQUARED


The Scarlet Hawks have been without their usual starting catcher, ESPN Boston All-Stater Taylor Archer during the last couple weeks, but LeBrun hasn’t lost a stride.

LeBrun showed her ability both behind the plate and at bat in Monday’s win.

First, she did it with the bat, with a slashing, run-scoring single.

“It was an outside pitch, right where I wanted it,” LeBrun said. “We’d been working on slashing in practice all week, so I felt I was very well prepared to do it, so I was confident in the box.”

Then, in the seventh inning, LeBrun popped up and fired a strike to cut down KP’s lead-off runner attempting to steal second.

“We told our catcher, Taylor LeBrun, to keep on her toes,” Macchi said. “You never know what they might try to do to try to get us a little on our heels. But she made a very nice play on the throw down and Lindsey Read made a terrific play on the pick and tag.”

Macchi continued, “It’s been seamless behind the plate [with LeBrun] and offensively she’s coming along and seeing the type of pitching we’re going to see.”

ON TOP OF HER GAME
Smith had all her pitches working, in addition to a particularly punchy fastball which cracked the mitt throughout the afternoon.

Even for one of the state’s premier pitchers, it was an exceptional performance. Smith kept the Warriors guessing throughout the game, changing their eye level with a steady stream of rise balls. More than that, Smith was able to work the corners and paint it with strikes.

“Sometimes batters get excited in the box and their hands move a little bit faster than they want them, too, and that makes it hard for hitters to get that outside pitch, so I was trying to work that outside corner.”

PLAINVILLE, Mass. -- On an afternoon where King Philip's ace pitcher Meghan Rico was not her standard, near-perfect self, her teammates made sure it wasn't going to be a problem.

The top-ranked Warriors pushed across five runs in the bottom of the fifth inning, highlighted by a three-run homer by UMass-bound catcher Olivia Godin, and then held off a seventh inning rally by No. 7 Mansfield to escape with a 5-4 victory at Watters Field.

Having mustered just two hits off of Hornets ace Trish Hansen through the first four innings, the Warriors (2-0) got to work with the bats in the fifth. Cayleigh McCarthy (two hits) led off the frame with a base hit, Rico reached on a fielders choice two batters later and Hailey Mullen singled to load the bases.

Up to the plate stepped Colgate-commit Meg Carnase, who ripped a two-run double into left to bring home McCarthy and Rico with the game's first two runs. Godin was next, and the senior launched the first pitch she saw well over the fence in left to score Mullen and Carnase ahead of her.

"We came in and really lit a fire under each other," Godin said of the rally. "We were like, 'we've played [Hansen] so many times, we know what she throws, lets go. Lets get it going.' We have our 2-3-4 [hitters] struggling to get on base and we hit better than this so we just wanted to get it done."

NOT A REPEAT OF LAST WEEK
Staring at a 5-0 deficit against the state's reigning Player of the Year, you might as well have just put a "W" next to KP in the Hockomock League' standings column and move on to the next one. Mansfield already found themselves in a similar situation in its season opener, having spotted North Attleborough an early 6-0 lead from which they could not recover.

On this day, the Hornets decided to fight it out. Mansfield opened the seventh with a single by Alexis Stanley and a four-pitch walk by Lauren Boen. Two batters later, Bri Chiusano (two hits) belted a rocket over the centerfield fence to cut the deficit to 5-3.

After an out, Hansen helped her own cause with a base hit and catcher Kelly English brought her all the way around with a double to make it 5-4 before Rico finally retired the last hitter.

"Coming in 5-0 against Rico, you just go in say, 'Alright, rally caps,'" Mansfield head coach Jinneane Sperrazza. "Our left fielder, who got the bunt sign all game, comes up and ropes a single. Our next girl is a sophomore, she got a walk. and we're thinking something's going to happen. Then we have Bri, who I'm thinking is going to rip a single and we'll score a run and instead she hits a 3-run home run. I couldn't be any prouder of these kids."

AN ATYPICAL PERFORMANCE ON AN ATYPICAL DAY
Not only did the sun disappear somewhere around the third inning, leaving nothing but a cool wind breezing through the Plainville Athletic Complex, but both teams also had to deal with the sound of a chainsaw grinding away in the background. A television crew from the National Geographic Network's reality show 'American Chainsaw' was hard at work carving up a tree just behind the Hornets dugout, creating not only unneeded noise but sending ashes of chewed up tree bark wafting through the air.

Rico, who is a threat to toss a perfect game with 15-plus strikeouts every time she takes the mound, seemed to struggle a bit. Mansfield got runners aboard in every inning but the sixth, and got the leadoff batter on five times.

The Hornets made Rico work for this one, consistently getting deep into the count and forcing her throw a staggering 115 pitches through the first five innings. That said, the George Washington-bound standout escaped every tough situation, including inducing a game-ending groundout to squash the Hornets seventh inning rally.

"We're used to having Rico be next to perfect," KP head coach Jim Leonard said. "She's usually a very efficient pitcher and they took her deep in the count. Not the typical performance that we've come to expect from her but when we don't get that we need to make sure that other aspects of our game step up."

WORCESTER, Mass. -- When Meghan Rico is in the circle, she remains in control. It’s not so much as King Philip head coach Jim Leonard says that perfection is “almost expected,” but nothing seems to faze her.

During Saturday’s Division 1 state championship softball game at Worcester State’s Rockwood Field, Rico found herself in a serious pickle in the sixth inning against Western Mass. champion Amherst. There were runners on first and third with one out.

No fear.

Rico reared back a little bit harder and came back with two of her 19 strikeouts to end the inning and preserve the scoreless tie. In an uncharacteristic moment, the George Washington commit gave a fist pump while sprinting off the field.

It was a big out.

And, as it would turn out, it was the difference after the Warriors took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the sixth on Meg Carnase’s double.

Rico returned to strike out the side in the seventh to provide KP with its second straight state title and finish the season undefeated at 26-0.

“We needed that right there,” Rico said of getting out of the sixth-inning jam. “If they score right there, it was going to be really hard to come back to score against them. I knew we had to score first, we had to be the ones to score and we did that.”

Runs came at a premium as the state’s top pitchers squared off in the circle with Rico opposing the Hurricanes’ Emma Mendoker.

Mendoker, the East Carolina commit, kept the Warriors hitless through 5 2/3 innings, only to take the hard-luck loss in the end. The Gatorade Massachusetts Softball Player of the Year finished with 10 strikeouts while surrendering only two hits.

“I think the main thing for Emma is that she has such an arsenal of both movement and speed that if keeps them off balance,” Hurricanes head coach Kacey Schmitt said.

Rico snapped Mendoker’s no-hit bid with a single to right-center to start the two-out rally. Courtesy runner Hailey Mullen came around to score the game’s only run on Carnase’s bases-loaded double after Amherst centerfielder Athena Donta slipped while trying to make a play on the fly ball.

It looked as though Carnase’s hit had cleared the bases, but the inning ended as an appeal made to the umpires was upheld finding that Jenn Robillard hadn’t touched third base while scoring what would’ve been KP’s third run. Instead, it was the third out.

“There were two strikes against me, so I was just trying to protect the plate,” Carnase said. “It was close, so I just swung at it and fell in.”



Amherst (23-2) jumped on Rico immediately with lead-off hitter Quianna Diaz-Patterson (2-for-3, 3 SBs) and third baseman Simone Frank banging out hits to start the game. The Hurricanes stranded both runners on base as Rico reeled off three strikeouts.

It was the beginning of a chain of 10 straight strikeouts by Rico, which helped her equal her single-game career high of 19.

“When there’s runners on base, it’s almost like she takes it personally,” Leonard said of Rico. “It was huge for us to strand those base runners in the first and again in the sixth innings, to keep those runners standing at third.”

Diaz-Patterson, the UMass commit, was again the fulcrum to the Hurricanes’ sixth-inning rally. Frank reached on a fielder’s choice via the bunt, but again the Amherst runners advanced no further.

Rico got Zoe Dillon-Davidson swinging and Mendoker looking to end the inning.

“We knew how their hitters hit,” Warriors catcher Olivia Godin said. “We went to the Amherst-Milford [state semifinal] game, so we knew that some batter we couldn’t pitch inside and we just had to go all away, off the plate. Mendoker’s great, so we had to go off plate to her.”



All they needed was just one run.

“It was a lot of pressure to get that perfect season,” Rico said. “We wanted it so bad that I had no doubt in my mind that we weren’t going to have a perfect season, but just to finish it like this is amazing.”

PLAINVILLE, Mass. – They could’ve gone all night and there likely wouldn’t have been a resolution.

No. 1 King Philip eventually pulled out a 1-0 win over No. 3 Milford Tuesday night in Plainville with two of the state’s best softball pitchers going head to head. The Warriors’ Meghan Rico and Scarlet Hawks ace Shannon Smith played dueling banjos, placing zero after zero on the board through seven innings.

Milford threatened to score in the top of the eighth, but it was King Philip (19-0) who earned the walk-off win with Tori Constantin laying down a perfect suicide squeeze scoring Hailey Mullen from third, dealing the Scarlet Hawks their first defeat of the season.

“It’s always rewarding to see when all the practice you put in leads to really good execution,” said Warriors head coach Jim Leonard, who led his team to a win over Milford in last year’s Division 1 state title game. “The girls have worked very hard, giving up Sundays and extra time in order to get things done. A team like that, we knew it was going to come down to one play and having them make the right play at the right time.”

Rico started the game on fire, retiring the first 10 Milford (15-1) batters in order via the strikeout. The George Washington commit finished the game with 16 strikeouts and allowing just two hits.

However, she had to rely on her defense to get out of a pickle in the eighth inning.

Softball tie-breaker rules place a runner on second base to start each extra-inning frame. After the first batter struck out, the runner advanced to third. With one out, Milford’s Sam Bonvino laid down a suicide squeeze attempt, only to see the ball pop straight up. Warriors catcher Olivia Godin snared the ball and fired to third to double up the retreating runner, ending the inning.

“They’re great hitters,” Rico said of Milford’s lineup. “I was really nervous coming into this game, but my defense was strong, our hitting was strong.”

KP scratched across the game-winning run thanks to some skillfully executed small ball.

With Mullen on second to start the inning, Godin put down a sacrifice bunt. Constantin followed that with another perfectly placed bunt between Smith and Scarlet Hawks first baseman Caroline Atkinson, who was shading in anticipation of the bunt.

“I knew getting up there that I was going to have to squeeze with Hailey [Mullen] on third,” Constantin said. “I just set in my head that I had to get it done no matter what.”

It appeared the Warriors might come up with the game-winning run in the bottom of the seventh. With one on and one out, Meg Carnase lined a single over the second base bag into center. KP center fielder Alyssa Siegmann looked as though she might have the legs to score from second base, but when rounding third, she was met by Leonard who was holding up the sign to stay just there.

“We had good hitters coming up and we have a lot of confidence in our hitters,” Leonard said, explaining his rationale for not waving Siegmann homeward bound. “You don’t want to take the bat out of their hands. You’ve got runners on second and third with [third baseman Anna] Kelly coming up.”

Kelly put a jolt into Smith’s 2-2 offering to the opposite field. However, she didn’t get quite enough as ball fell into the right fielder’s glove, several feet shy of fence.

“She put a few more feet on that ball and it’s all over,” Leonard added.

Smith took the hard-luck loss after striking out 11, while allowing seven hits and three walks.

KP stranded nine runners on base.

PLAINVILLE, Mass. -- King Philip pitcher Meg Rico is regarded among the best softball pitchers in the state, let alone the Hockomock League.

But Mansfield’s Trish Hansen proved she’s every bit a gamer as her counterpart during Wednesday’s battle between the Hockomock rivals.

Still, the top-ranked Warriors prevailed on the scoreboard, sweeping the season series with a 1-0 win and the loss came in the most unfortunate of ways for Hansen and her Hornet teammates.

“She was relentless,” Mansfield head coach Jinneane Sperazza said of Hansen’s effort. “She had them off-balance all game long. You couldn’t ask for anything more.”

King Philip (14-0, 11-0) scored the lone run of the game in the second inning on a throwing error by Hansen. Rico hit a one-out single to left and advanced to second base on a miscue in the outfield. Kelsey Gray tried to bunt pinch runner Hailey Mullen over to third, but popped it straight up. Hansen made a diving play to snare the ball for the second out, but her attempt to double-up Mullen returning to second sailed into center field.

Mullen gathered herself and blazed around the base paths ahead of the return throw, scoring what would prove to be the game-winner.

“Hanson’s a quality pitcher and some of these games are determined by one play or one error,” Warriors head coach Jim Leonard said. “Fortunately, I think we put a little pressure on them to force that. I think that’s what good teams do, they put pressure on and then capitalize on the mistakes.”

Sperazza couldn’t help but feel for her pitcher.

“She made an aggressive play and it was a good play,” she said of Hansen’s throw. “It’s just unfortunate.”

Meanwhile, equipped with a one-run cushion, Rico went about shutting down the Hornets (11-2, 9-2). The junior hurled a complete-game shutout with 15 strikeouts while surrendering two hits and three walks.

Hansen was tagged with the tough-luck loss while going the distance, striking out two and scattering five hits.

The win marked King Philip’s 55th straight win in the Hockomock and all but assured them of the league title, handing Mansfield their second loss of the season.

“It was one play today that was going to make us or break us,” Sperazza said. “[Rico] is a great pitcher, but were right there with them today.”